Gameloft situation update

Recently all the Gameloft games were taken down from VitaDB and from Rinne's Github account. It is unfortunate, but not unheard of in the realm of homebrew ports. We don't have exact information about what happened, but the removal suggests Rinne was contacted and asked to take it down and he complied. I am aware companies want to protect their IPs and whatnot, but in this case it just feels completely unnecessary. All of the Gameloft PS Vita ports are based on their android versions, but they do not use/share any asset or line of code, whatsover. That means they are completely legal. They are android wrappers and they work by loading the official Android ARMv7 executables in memory, resolving its imports with native functions and patching it in order to properly run. By doing so, it's basically as if we emulate a minimalist Android environment in which we run natively the executable as is.

There is a word emulate, but the sentence ends that the executable is running natively. The person who came with android .so loader is The Flow himself. He invented it, because he wanted to play GTA San Andreas on the PS Vita, and thanks to him we can play not just that, but so many more, great android ports too. Gameloft, back in the day, had a lot of solid knock-offs based on the popular franchises and many of them were ported to PS Vita. Now they are all gone, at least from official sources, they are still very easy to come by by using google search. You can see every single port that was taken down on the picture below, with the latest update version too. There are 10 of them in total.

Two of them were ported just last week- Modern Combat 1 and Gangstar West Coast Hustle, The Dark Knight Rises was ported at the end of October 2025, Assassins Creed came at the ReiHEN contest, and the rest including Ultimate Spiderman Total Mayhem came earlier in 2025. All of these games are quite old and they are not officially available to buy from Play Store, or anywhere else for that matter. Only way you can play them, is to download the apk from piracy website and install it manually on your phone, therefore it was even more mind-blowing to find out some action was taken to remove them from Vita library, because they are just abandonware.

I am considering majority of these ports quite decent, mostly because I have had nice memories with them in the past, but lot of people call it an outright sh!t. These words are too harsh imo. No, they are not perfect quality games but they can be still a lot of fun. I was playing Modern Combat 1 for the first time just now and let me tell you it was pleasant experience :-) Fun fact - this port has unlocked framerate (original was locked at 25fps), physical controls (original just touch controls) and it also supports a TROPHIES :-)

After the ports were taken down, big discussion emerged. Lot of people were pissed off and I think I am correct when I say rightfully so. This comment from underneath my YouTube video nicely sums up all atmosphere

Which brings us to the present time and to the Gl33ntwine. He is a retired Vita developer, with lot of significant projects under his belt - Dead Space Mobile, Mass Effect Infiltrator or Modern Combat 3. He heard about what happened and he was pissed, like all of us. This anger turned him up and he wants to get out of his retirement just to port some more quality Gameloft games. I am not able to quote him word by word because this is a family friendly blog, but you can find his statement in the Vita Nuova Discord. It is quite emotional :) I've got a feeling, he is a man of his word and that he is going to deliver. The motivation behind his action is simple - to piss them off. To give them taste of their own medicine and this is one of strongest driving force in the nature. I am wishing him good luck and I am fully standing by his actions. In the end, any android PS Vita port is completely legal.

Last but not least, the bounties. There were quite a few of them for Gameloft games (because there are still a lot of good ones left). I have contacted the biggest donors and told them about the situation. I have told them, the developers might not be interested in porting more Gameloft games. Some have transferred it to non-gameloft games, some have double down and put even more money into it. I am only a messenger, it is your money, do what you want with it, but if the port is eventually going to happen (and there was a bounty for it), of course I am going to award it to the developer responsible, even if it will not appear on VitaDB. As long as it is publicly available, and it is in playable, finishable state, without glitches and bugs, the bounty will be awarded.

That's it for this article. Next step consists of trying the brand new DS Vita update. I have already tried Mario Kart DS, I am not sure how the dev is doing it, but every release the game is running better and better. Can't wait to try more games.

Thanks for reading comrade, I will catch you in the next one 🙏✌️